


By the author of "Laura's Dilemma"

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Books, Class Differences, F/F, Gossip, Reference to illness suffered by child, Regency, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 03:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16188977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: There was always a fire in the schoolroom grate, even when she came home long after midnight. And Miss Cole was always there. Sometimes she would be turning over the pages of a novel (Maria was almost sure it was a novel); sometimes writing a letter; sometimes she would be dozing in the high-backed chair that had been Mamma's favourite when they lived in the country; but she would always be there when Maria looked in.And Maria always looked in.





	By the author of "Laura's Dilemma"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Автор «Выбора Лоры»](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17543861) by [sige_vic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sige_vic/pseuds/sige_vic), [WTF Women 2019 (WTF_Women_2018)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Women_2018/pseuds/WTF%20Women%202019)



There was always a fire in the schoolroom grate, even when she came home long after midnight. And Miss Cole was always there. Sometimes she would be turning over the pages of a novel (Maria was almost sure it was a novel); sometimes writing a letter; sometimes she would be dozing in the high-backed chair that had been Mamma's favourite when they lived in the country; but she would always be there when Maria looked in.

And Maria always looked in. It would generally take Miss Cole a moment to notice her; then, with pleasure blooming across her face, she would lay down book or pen and say, 'Come and tell me about it.'

So Maria would sit down in the chair opposite her, or on the footstool, and lay her face against her knee, and tell her about the people and the music, the supper and the dresses, who had asked her to dance and who had danced with Olivia. And Miss Cole would smile, and listen, and ask questions, and say how delightful it all sounded, and Maria would say yes, indeed it was, but it was delightful to be home again. And then Maria would say reluctantly that she supposed she should go to bed, and would retire, and she supposed that Miss Cole did so too.

Mamma had suggested (gently – Mamma was always gentle) that Maria ought to go straight to bed when they came in of an evening, for it would not do to tire herself out.

'But Mamma,' Maria had said, 'I'm always too excited to sleep.'

'Then what about Anna, waiting up to undress you?'

Maria had laughed. 'Anna will be asleep, no matter what time I come in.'

'But what of poor Miss Cole? My dear, you can't expect her to sit up for you every night, and surely you would not wish to see Susannah's learning suffer.'

'I don't ask her to,' Maria had replied, 'though indeed I'm glad she does, and if she did go to bed before I came in then I wouldn't mind, and I could hardly stop her.'

But Miss Cole was always there, and Maria was always glad of it.

*

Tonight, Miss Cole had been writing. It was evidently a long letter: even crossed and recrossed it ran to several sheets. When Maria entered the room she looked up, smiling, and made the pages into a neat little stack. 'Well?' she said, the way she always did. 'Come and tell me about it.'

Maria sat down in the chair opposite Miss Cole's, and stretched out her tired feet luxuriously. 'Oh, it was dull, really. There's no news. Except Lucy Trowbridge is engaged to be married to Mr Morden: he's dreadfully rich, of course, but so old and ugly!'

'Older than me?' Miss Cole asked.

Maria was shocked. 'Oh, heaps! You aren't old!'

Miss Cole sighed. 'Tonight, I feel so. Never mind. Does Miss Trowbridge seem happy?'

Maria wrinkled her nose. 'She said that she was. Or, she said that she could hope for nothing better – just like that, with a smile, but it means two things, doesn't it? And I believe she knew it.'

'I see,' Miss Cole said wryly. 'Had such a one as Mr Morden asked me, when I was seventeen, I might have come to a similar conclusion.'

Privately, Maria was glad that such a one as Mr Morden had _not_ asked her, though she knew the thought to be selfish. 'He would have been old then, too. Oh!' she continued, 'Sally has been reading a new novel; she said it was most amusing and she promised to lend it to me.'

'Indeed?' Miss Cole raised her eyebrows, and gave a little lop-sided smile that brought a dimple to her cheek.

'You needn't look like that. I know perfectly well that you read novels yourself.'

There was an edge of merriment to her severe tone as she asked, 'Would your mother consider this one suitable?'

Maria considered the question. 'I believe so,' she said. 'It's called _Laura's Dilemma_ : perhaps you have read it?'

Miss Cole raised her eyebrows still further. 'I'm familiar with it. Yes, I hope your mamma would approve it. Perhaps I will lend her my own copy so that she can pass her own judgement.'

'Oh, no, don't! What if she doesn't approve?'

Perhaps, Maria thought, Miss Cole would lend her copy to _her_. But the response was a teasing smile, and, 'Then either I or your friend Sally will tell you the story. Come, if you don't go to bed then your mother will scold both of us.'

*

The season wore on. _Laura's Dilemma_ was borrowed and read and returned (and, somewhat after the event, approved), and there was always a fire in the schoolroom grate, and Miss Cole was always there.

*

Maria did not learn why they were obliged to leave the ball in such intemperate haste until they were rattling home in the carriage. 'Susannah has been taken ill,' Mamma said. 'Miss Cole sent for me.' In the gloom, Maria could just see her mother's mouth set in a worried line. She took her hand in her own.

At the house, it seemed that there was still less that she could usefully do. Mrs Parker met them at the door. Miss Cole was with Susannah, she said; the doctor had been sent for.

Mamma dashed for the stairs without so much as stopping to remove her cloak. Maria, feeling herself to be in the way, betook herself to the schoolroom.

She found that Miss Cole – no doubt summoned with great urgency – had left her papers in considerable disarray. One or two sheets lay on the floor – too close to the fire, Maria thought; if a spark were to fly out they might easily catch. Taking care to hold her skirts up off the hearthrug, she bent to pick them up. She sat down in Miss Cole's chair to put them into order.

_'Well!' said Harriet. 'I suppose one of us at least must be married, or we shall all starve!'_

Had it been a letter, Maria would not have kept reading. But it was not a letter.

_'My dear,' Phyllida returned, 'if you could contrive to do it, then it would save the rest of us a deal of trouble.'_

Somewhere upstairs, a door opened and closed. There were swift footsteps on the stairs, and a low, hurried conversation.

No one came near the schoolroom. Maria kept on reading.

Harriet and Phyllida were sisters, it seemed, and there was a third, Augusta, who was in love with a poverty-stricken perpetual curate. Harriet disapproved: she had taken it upon herself to restore the family fortunes, and Augusta was by no means helping matters. Besides the three sisters, there was their mother, and their Aunt Decima, and Aunt Decima's companion, who was always referred to as 'dear Sophia'.

Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. Maria paused to listen. Two low voices – that must be Warren and the doctor – and Mrs Parker's, growing louder as they went upstairs, and suddenly hushed as they approached Susannah's room. Then the bedroom door opening and closing, and then silence. Maria listened a little longer, hoping to hear some sound that would convey good news for Susannah, but there was nothing.

Reproving herself that worrying could not help matters, she turned back to the story.

Maria felt most for Phyllida, who did not seem to care if she married nobody at all, preferring rather to experiment with a series of alternative remunerative schemes. Despite her concern for Susannah, Maria could not help laughing. She read on. Driven almost to distraction by Phyllida's unwise investment in a firm that purported to manufacture artificial flowers, Harriet accepted a proposal of marriage from the founder of the firm.

_'But truly, Harriet,' Phyllida said to her, 'wouldn't you rather have the income from the flowers without Mr Sawyer himself thrown in?'_

_'Truly, Phyllida,' Harriet replied, 'I could hope for nothing better.'_

Maria suppressed an exclamation, and turned back a few pages, and read them once again. Then she read on, her suspicions mounting.

Mr Sawyer solved the problem, or compounded it, by dropping dead within a couple of pages, but Harriet met another eligible bachelor at a picnic while Phyllida and 'dear Sophia' were gathering wild strawberries.

_'Might there be a demand for preserves?' Phyllida wondered. 'Do you think Sir Bertram could be persuaded to invest in the venture?'_

_'My dear Phyllida, it has taken us five minutes to find eight strawberries between us, and it will take us less than another five to exhaust the supply completely. I suggest that the best use we could make of the fruits of our labours would be to eat four apiece.'_

_'Dear Sophia!' Phyllida said, and acted upon her suggestion._

Maria chuckled and read on, so absorbed that she did not notice Miss Cole had entered the room until she heard her startled cry.

She looked up. 'How is Susannah?' she asked, reminded in one horrible moment of the situation upstairs.

'She's asleep. The doctor thinks that she will do.' For once, Miss Cole looked less than collected; her eyes flickered between Maria and the stack of pages on the table at her elbow.

Maria found that she rather enjoyed being the one who was not discomfited. 'A new work by the author of _Laura's Dilemma_ , I assume?'

Miss Cole glanced up and down the landing and then shut the door. 'That is correct.'

'It's very good.'

'Thank you.' She came and sat down opposite Maria.

Maria sorted back through the pages she had already read, and quoted, ' _Truly, Phyllida, I could hope for nothing better._ '

'By the author of _Laura's Dilemma_ , with assistance from Miss Maria Seward,' Miss Cole allowed, blushing. 'Maria, I -'

'I imagined the author of _Laura's Dilemma_ sitting at a fine mahogany desk in a room with a view over rolling parkland,' Maria said, dreamily, 'and wearing gold and diamonds.'

Miss Cole looked anxious. 'Are you disappointed?'

Maria's heart melted. 'Not as much as I am excited. A little disappointed, perhaps. Everybody talks about your books: why are you a governess?'

'They don't pay as well as you might think. In any case, my stories are my pension,' Miss Cole said.

'Your pension?'

Miss Cole sighed. 'Have you thought, Maria, that you must be married, and leave your father's house, and that you will not be able to sit up late talking to me?'

'Perhaps I'll have you be governess to my children,' Maria said with a smile, 'or perhaps I'll be an old maid.'

Miss Cole continued as if she had not spoken. 'And the same is true of your little sister, and of any other girl I might teach. And, sooner or later, I will be too old to teach anybody, and I will have to live on what I have saved.'

'Later, surely,' said Maria. 'How old are you? Thirty-five?'

'A lady doesn't ask,' said Miss Cole, and added, 'Thirty-two.'

'There!' said Maria. 'You have years and years.'

'Whenever it comes, I must be prepared for it. And now is as good a time as any to prepare. I have a roof over my head and bread on the table before me. I have a certain amount of leisure. And -' she smiled – 'I have an observer who is very willing to report me how society conducts itself.'

'I thought you simply liked talking to me!' Maria said, dismayed.

'I do.' Miss Cole buried her face in her hands. 'Truly, if I'd never written a word in my life, I would still look forward to the moment when you come home at night more than I do to any other in my day.'

Maria pressed her advantage. 'Who is Laura?'

'Laura of the dilemma? Kitty Pinnock – Lady Covery, now.'

Lady Covery: a tall, striking woman, very different from the character that the author had described as 'a little brown hen'. But there was something in the keen observation and the ready wit that the real woman shared with the fictional one: now that Miss Cole had confessed it, Maria could see the similarity. She laughed. 'I shall have to read your other books, now, and see who I might recognise.'

Miss Cole's face grew grave. She rose to her feet, and took the manuscript from Maria's hands. 'It would grieve me deeply were you to believe that I only esteemed you as a source of gossip, and I can well imagine that you might. Say the word, Maria, and this goes into the fire, and I will swear upon my honour that nothing you tell me will find its way into one of my tales again.'

'Oh, no!' Maria exclaimed, reaching out as if to take the pages back. 'I want to know what happens!'

'But you must know what happens,' Miss Cole said, not relinquishing her hold on the papers. 'Harriet marries her rich man, who in this case is Sir Bertram, and everyone else is mightily relieved about it.'

Maria tugged gently at the manuscript. 'Not Harriet! I want to know about the other sisters! Does Augusta marry her curate? And -' she swallowed – 'what happens to Phyllida and Sophia?'

Miss Cole looked startled and let go of the manuscript all at once. 'Sophia?'

'The aunt's companion.'

'Well, yes, of course, but why should anything happen to her?'

Maria resisted the temptation to scan through the pages to find the answer herself. 'Why, because she's in love with Phyllida, of course, and Phyllida's in love with her. It's quite obvious from the way that they talk to each other at the picnic.'

Miss Cole went pale, and sat down rather suddenly. 'I shall have to take that out.'

Maria nodded reluctantly, accepting that fact. 'All the more reason to tell me now.'

'My dear,' she said, 'what _can_ happen? I suppose that eventually the aunt dies, and Sophia goes to be a companion to someone else, and perhaps Phyllida marries, or perhaps she remains with the mother.'

Her hands were trembling very slightly. Maria came to sit at her feet, and laid her face against her knee.

'I don't like that ending at all,' she said. 'Can't they run away together?'

Miss Cole's hand came down to rest gently on Maria's head. 'What would they live on?'

'Phyllida would have ideas. They could hold up a coach – or the aunt could leave Sophia all her money – or they could take in laundry.'

'Sophia wouldn't let Phyllida take in laundry. So long as she had family who were prepared to provide for her, Sophia wouldn't do anything that would jeopardise Phyllida's health or her comfort. She'd be content just to be under the same roof as her, or even simply to know that she was well.'

Maria looked up, and the tenderness and pain in Miss Cole's face made her draw breath. 'I don't think Phyllida would care,' she said. 'I think that _she_ would be content to be under the same roof as Sophia, and never mind her health and her comfort.'

'Sophia has been in the world long enough to know that she _ought_ to mind her health and her comfort.'

Very gently, with one finger, Miss Cole was stroking the curve of her ear, and Maria shivered. She put up her own hand, and held Miss Cole's to her cheek.

'What's your name?' she asked, and knew as she asked it that knowing the answer would change everything.

'Beatrice.'

'Beatrice,' she repeated, almost under her breath, as if it were a prayer. She got to her feet and held out her hands. Beatrice took them and stood in her turn. Maria pulled her close into a sudden, quick, close, embrace, and kissed her on the mouth. 'Good night,' she said, 'dear, dear, Beatrice.'

*

The weeks passed, and Susannah recovered and became as lively and sharp a child as ever she had been, and the weather became too warm to need a fire in the schoolroom. But Maria still came there of an evening when there was no company, and she would sit at Beatrice's feet and tell her what last night's company had said; or she would read Beatrice's manuscripts, and sometimes she would kiss her hands, and sometimes her mouth, and Beatrice would think that she was happier now than ever before in her life, and wonder how long it could possibly last.

One night, she forgot herself so far as to wonder it out loud. But Maria only laughed.

'When I am twenty-five,' she said, 'I shall come into Uncle John's inheritance. And if no one has married me by then – and I believe that I can contrive matters such that they don't – then I can do as I please. And perhaps you will still be in this house, giving Susannah lessons, and perhaps you'll be in someone else's, or perhaps you'll have sold so many stories that you'll have set up house on your own – but wherever you are, dear Beatrice, you'll come and find me, for I believe that between us we could be very comfortable as two old maids.' She stretched up to place a kiss at the corner of Beatrice's mouth.

'I shall be a very old maid by then,' said Beatrice.

'I shan't care,' Maria said.

*

And, when it came to it, she didn't.


End file.
